AUTHOR=Yeritsyan Knarik , Valant Matjaz , Badasyan Artem 

TITLE=Processing helix–coil transition data: Account of chain length and solvent effects

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Nanotechnology

VOLUME=4

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nanotechnology/articles/10.3389/fnano.2022.982644

DOI=10.3389/fnano.2022.982644

ISSN=2673-3013

ABSTRACT=<p>Numerous nanobiotechnologies include manipulations of short polypeptide chains. The conformational properties of these polypeptides are studied <italic>in vitro</italic> by circular dichroism and time-resolved infrared spectroscopy. To find out the interaction parameters, the measured temperature dependence of normalized helicity degree needs to be further processed by fitting to a model. Using recent advances in the Hamiltonian formulation of the classical Zimm and Bragg model, we explicitly include chain length and solvent effects in the theoretical description. The expression for the helicity degree we suggest successfully fits the experimental data and provides hydrogen bonding energies and nucleation parameter values within the standards in the field.</p>